How To Mute Safari

Picture this- you are listening to your favorite song, probably Lady Gaga, and browsing the web on your Mac when, suddenly, a cacophony of annoying pop up advertisements begin to blast across your speakers and ruin your sing along… if only you knew how to mute Safari so this horrible inconvenience could be avoided in the future! Thankfully there is, but it may not be as straight forward as you, a loyal Apple fan, would expect.

Go on a Safari. The very first thing necessary for muting Safari is to actually use Safari. Self explanatory, but you never know! After you have downloaded and installed all the necessary updates for Safari, you may be thinking that the next step will simply be "go to settings and click mute" but, for some reason, this is not an included feature with the pervasive versions of the browser. Where as users of Firefox and Windows can simply go to the volume mixer and either mute or turn down sounds from various programs, Safari users have a little bit of a roundabout way until they can accomplish the same feat.

Go to a third party. Luckily, some plug-in developers have figured that it is just silly to not be able to mute sounds from a web browser. While Apple has made inklings in the past of developing the feature on all of its browsers and operating systems, you wouldn't be looking for answers if that option was available everywhere. Instead, your only option is to find a Mac based plug-in that will do it for you. While it would be impossible to suggest one that works, many users have had great success with programs such as Detour for Intel based Macs and Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack Pro will allow you to hijack the browsers audio and apply many effects- including muting it. Sadly, these options may be your only recourse for eliminating unwanted audio while you try and do something else, that is except…

Complaining. Tell Apple you want an official mute plug-in across all versions of Safari. With most development, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and there is nothing more squeaky than being yelled at about free iPods while you just want to listen to some Bob Dylan.